Approximately how much in electricity costs (£$) if I keep my computer switched on 24/7, 365 days?

Question

My main computer (P4 3.2ghz) is used for long periods during working hours and evening, and left switched on 24/7.

Its just rebooted once every few days to freshen up.

Monitor is set to go to sleep/standby after 25 minutes of inactivity.

Would anyone have a educated guesstimate on how much money in electricity it might be costing to keep a pc switched on all year ?

Answer 1

this depends on your power supply unit in your computer.
1Kw on your PSU is = to 1 unit of electricity at what ever you pay per unit.
i run two computers up 24/7 almost constantly 650W + 480W PSU with other home appliances and powered peripherals and my current bill in the UK including the standing charge is just under £1 per day on average.
for me 365 days per year would be approximately £365 per year total electricity bill.
two computer, one display panel (only on when at my computer not set to turn off by itself as this will use more power than if you manualy press the power button when you are not using the panel), I have a TV, VCR/DVD combination unit, Printer, scanner, modem/router, telephones, DVB-T HD recorder, Fridge/freezer, oven and washing machine and a power shower.
all of those average out to be around £400 per year when all are used together, though typicaly i pay less than £1 a day (about 6-8Kwhs per 24hours)

to sum up to run one computer that has a typical 350W PSU 24hours a day 365 days a year should be around £180 a year or less.
but as i said in my opening, it realy does depend on the W of the PSU, and the age of your PSU the older PSUs use a lot more power than the new ones, and so cost more to run.
just do your maths. find your power rating. use my example as a guide to work out your rating and costing.

good uck i hope that helps.

Answer 2

Depends where you live. Usually in Quebec it cost $0.065 or something cents per kilowatt-hour I think and the average computer should have a 550 watt-hour power supply.

So let's say you leave your PC on @ 550 w/hr x 24 hours in a day, thats 13.2 kw/hr or $0.86 per day or $313.90 a year. Well I think.

Answer 3

If you have a 200 watt power supply, it would consume about 1KWH every 5 hours, or about 4 KWH per day, with your computer running full blast. Since your computer probably has a hibernate mode, it will most likely use much less than that. If you pay 5cents (US) per KWH that would be a maximum of 25cents per day. If you were actually only using the computer actively for 5 hours per day, it would be more like ten cents per day.

Answer 4

thebestnamesarealready... summed it up really well, so I won't bother with that.

I will add however that just because you're computer has a 550W Power supply, dosen't mean that it will actually draw that, that's it's upper limit on current draw.

Now my PC has 2x 580W PSU's running parralell, but it does't draw 1160W when running, I estimate it draws about 700W at full whack.

The wattage rating on power supplies are a maximum not a constant.